DC strikes back at the Ultimates

Well guys, hate tro burst your bubble, but Wildstorm/DC really did the first Widescreen, kick thier heads in team back with Warren Ellis's The Authority, wich the Ultimates are really just a conceptual extension from.

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Baxter said:
Well guys, hate tro burst your bubble, but Wildstorm/DC really did the first Widescreen, kick thier heads in team back with Warren Ellis's The Authority, wich the Ultimates are really just a conceptual extension from.
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Point well taken (says the guy who belatedly got into The Authority).

But in fairness, Mark Gruenwald's original Squadron Supreme miniseries set the tone for the whole paranoid, a-team-of-demagogical-superhumans-could-take-over-the-world-so-we-might-as-well-have-them-in-service-of-our-Government schtick, of which The Authority (and Ellis' version of Stormwatch) was "just a conceptual extension from".

So, in an odd way, Nurhachi is *half*-right: the original Hyperion is one of the first "nuanced" Supermen-with-a-screwy-view-of-ethics.

Feel the hyphenation, biatch!

In any case, the whole storyline with "The Maximums" (or whatever they're called) indicates a HUGE void of creativity, IMHO, since DC already *has* (had?) a team of Authority analogs, called The Elite or something, from Joe Kelly's run on Superman, I think. So this latest idea sounds like so much rehashing.
 
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compound said:
But in fairness, Mark Gruenwald's original Squadron Supreme miniseries set the tone for the whole paranoid, a-team-of-demagogical-superhumans-could-take-over-the-world-so-we-might-as-well-have-them-in-service-of-our-Government schtick, of which The Authority (and Ellis' version of Stormwatch) was "just a conceptual extension from".
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I never read Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme. Was his incarnation of the infamous JLA-Analogues-Wrought-Large as cynical and paranoiac as Straczynski's take in Supreme Power ?
 
ourchair said:
I never read Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme. Was his incarnation of the infamous JLA-Analogues-Wrought-Large as cynical and paranoiac as Straczynski's take in Supreme Power ?
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I haven't read it either, but Wikipedia says that it is ;)

No, seriously, I wrote my reply on the basis of the reputation of the original series. But honestly, contemporary reviews of the collected edition (released 2003, I think) suggest that it's really nothing innovative or significant, even by today's 'mature' or 'realisitic' standards.

Ninth Art's Brent Keane remarks:
While one must give credit to Gruenwald's willingness to push the envelope with SQUARDON SUPREME, the whole does not add up to the sum of its parts. SQUADRON SUPREME hasn't dated at all well, and in the wake of recent world events, some of the sentiments expressed in the collection come across as horribly simplistic. If anything, it reads like a superhero comic with extreme delusions of grandeur - and lord knows there are enough of those in the marketplace already.

~ from http://www.ninthart.com/display.php?article=659
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Just the same, it defintiely qualifies as an early *attempt* to do the proto-Authority narrative.
 
compound said:
I haven't read it either, but Wikipedia says that it is ;)
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By admitting to your dependence on Wikipedia, you have just undermined your geek cred. Faker. :twisted:
 
compound said:
Point well taken (says the guy who belatedly got into The Authority).

But in fairness, Mark Gruenwald's original Squadron Supreme miniseries set the tone for the whole paranoid, a-team-of-demagogical-superhumans-could-take-over-the-world-so-we-might-as-well-have-them-in-service-of-our-Government schtick, of which The Authority (and Ellis' version of Stormwatch) was "just a conceptual extension from".

So, in an odd way, Nurhachi is *half*-right: the original Hyperion is one of the first "nuanced" Supermen-with-a-screwy-view-of-ethics.

Feel the hyphenation, biatch!

In any case, the whole storyline with "The Maximums" (or whatever they're called) indicates a HUGE void of creativity, IMHO, since DC already *has* (had?) a team of Authority analogs, called The Elite or something, from Joe Kelly's run on Superman, I think. So this latest idea sounds like so much rehashing.
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The Elite was indeed DCs mainline universe take on the overpowered, amoral team, but it's not even it's first one. The Ultra-Marine Corps showed up in JLA back during Morrisons run, and was recently used in JLA Classified. The Elite, as far as I know, was initiay just a storytelling device to tell one damned good superman story, thanks to Joe Casey, one of the sucessor writers of The Authority itself. Sadly the characters became more popular over time bringing us JLE, wich is a bit of a mess.

Seems to me that as far as The Maximums go, while obviously taking thier name from The Ultimates, the solicit doesn't tell you anything about them other than they're a group, witha dead member, looking for Batman and Superman. In the story they could be nothing like our beloved Ultimate Avengers. Don't jump to comclusions.

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Baxter said:
Seems to me that as far as The Maximums go, while obviously taking thier name from The Ultimates, the solicit doesn't tell you anything about them other than they're a group, witha dead member, looking for Batman and Superman. In the story they could be nothing like our beloved Ultimate Avengers. Don't jump to comclusions.
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Guilty as charged. Admittedly, I shot off my post without clicking on the link. Must stop fingers working quicker than brain... :p
 
So I read the first issue of this and I say it's pretty funny the way they poke fun at the Ultimates. It even has a
Dead hawkeye wannabe.
 
So yeah, it's The Ultimates. But you know what else? It was damn funnny when they were on screen. The Bizzaro bit was fairly flat, but the rest was good. I'm looking forward to the rest of this arc.

And hey. it's a cemetary, at midnight. These things happen.
 
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